Pamela Fiori attends Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst" at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Pamela Fiori attends Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst" at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Photo: Craig Barritt, (Credit Too Long, See Caption)

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Jennifer Hudson performs at Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst" at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Jennifer Hudson performs at Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst" at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Photo: Craig Barritt, (Credit Too Long, See Caption)

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Gayle King attends Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary Citizen Hearst at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Gayle King attends Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary Citizen Hearst at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Photo: Craig Barritt, (Credit Too Long, See Caption)

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Director Leslie Iwerks speaks onstage at the Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst" at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Director Leslie Iwerks speaks onstage at the Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst" at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Photo: Craig Barritt, (Credit Too Long, See Caption)

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Debra Shriver, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and China Machado attend Hearst's 125th anniversary celebration and private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst" at Hearst Tower on September 18, 2012 in New York City.

Emma Hearst (left) and Gillian Hearst attend the private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst."

Emma Hearst (left) and Gillian Hearst attend the private screening of the new documentary "Citizen Hearst."

Photo: Craig Barritt, (Credit Too Long, See Caption)

'Citizen Hearst' tips its hat to media giant

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New York --

As dusk fell in Manhattan on Tuesday, the Hearst Corp. threw a party at its glimmering tower to show "Citizen Hearst," Leslie Iwerks' new documentary about the 125-year-long history of the media giant.

In the lobby at the top of the escalator that cuts a diagonal through the waterfall dominating the building's four-story-tall entrance area was a photo from Town & Country of Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Van Heflin and Jimmy Stewart, in black tie, cavorting over cocktails. The image captured the mood of the Hearst family members, the Hearst executives, the Hearst workers and the Hearst guests at the party: This is a place of tradition and sophistication, and this is a moment to be relished.

CEO Frank A. Bennack Jr. cited the company's aim: "to inform, entertain and inspire," and just about every one of the 220 or so guests echoed endorsement of that mission fulfilled. But along with those high pursuits, the Hearst Corp.'s holdings - 15 daily papers, including The Chronicle, 36 weeklies, 20 American magazines and hundreds worldwide, 29 TV stations, a 20 percent stake in ESPN, stakes in Lifetime, A&E, the History Channel; also investments in automotive, electronic, medical/pharmaceutical, financial information industries, newspaper features distribution, real estate, TV production, Internet and marketing services - have made a grand old American fortune.

So "Citizen Hearst" is about innovation and imagination and daring and enterprise. And as much as the word "family" was spoken in heartfelt terms - there are six family members on the board of the corporation, noted Bennack, and "as for the rest of you, you're also family" - it's also about significant business savvy.

Writer Gay Talese, a friend of the company in several ways, arrived early. In his 20s and 30s, he wrote for Hearst's Esquire, contributing profiles and pieces that became his signature. His daughter, Catherine, is a photo editor who worked on a commemorative book for the occasion. Bennack, presented in the film as a fitting heir to William Randolph Hearst, is a "man about town," said his friend Talese with affection. "He's so active in New York society, you see him at Lincoln Center, at opera events. ... He's got a very outgoing personality. He could have been mayor of New York."

Mayor speaks

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who founded the Bloomberg business news financial empire before entering politics, was there, too, calling the Hearst Corp. his "second-favorite media company." As to the movie, "It's about a Harvard-educated CEO turned media mogul, so it wouldn't interest me," he joked.

Bloomberg put the Hearst purchase of the New York Morning Journal in 1895 into historical context (the same year the New York Public Library opened and movies were shown for the first time in public), took time especially to praise the late Helen Gurley Brown (to whom, along with George Hearst Jr., the movie is dedicated) and to note that the Hearst Tower was the first skyscraper to break ground in the city after 9/11.

At the end of his remarks, he started to leave the podium and then returned to urge listeners, "You should all wear Ralph Lauren clothes. ... Hello, Ralph." The designer, who advertises in hundreds of Hearst publications worldwide, has long ties with the company. Bennack took the podium back with easy aplomb - "I've never heard Mike talk that he didn't kill every cat in the alley. He covers everything" - and thanked Bloomberg, "who helped get this tower off the ground."

Ex-Chronicle guests

After the movie, Bennack introduced some of the people who'd been featured in it, including former San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein, and writers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. Together, they'd soldiered on in the legal battle to protect their sources' confidentiality in the BALCO case about ballplayers' steroid use. That war's reunion was completed by the presence of Hearst General Counsel Eve Burton, who had represented them.

Among the veterans of other crises was model China Machado, the first woman of color on the cover of Harper's Bazaar (she is also in "About Face," the HBO doc made by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, her companion for the evening). Her allies were Diana Vreeland and editor Carmel Snow, and Richard Avedon, who threatened to stop taking pictures for the magazine if she wasn't used. By the time the picture was taken, she said, she was "shaking like a leaf."

Director Iwerks, who co-produced the movie with Jane Kelly Kosek, has made documentaries for Pixar, ILM and Disney. She said the Hearsts saw those movies, liked them and told her "whatever you need, we will provide you." Bennack himself saw it "when we were about to lock the picture," she continued. "And if he had had a lot of notes, I would have been in a world of hurt." He had none.

Hearst Corp. trustee Gil Maurer, former chief operating officer of the corporation, was chairman of the committee that chose British architect Norman Foster for the Hearst Tower.

"I think I had a big hand in that, but so does Frank. ... I have always believed in making a visual presentation." The corporate chiefs are well aware that their old image was conservative. "This is a different place for a different era."

People who liked the building told him, " 'This is cool,' " he said. "I didn't intend it to be cool. I intended it to be good." Maurer says in the movie, "If I can say Mr. Hearst gave us one thing, it was a reverence for the creative product." This was echoed in conversation with King Features creative director Frank Caruso, who said Hearst knew how to spot talent, and "that's what kept his properties on top."

Pre-screening reception

At the lobby reception before the screening, waiters circulated with small hot dogs on buns, with squiggles of mustard. William Randolph Hearst III explained that they were sausages made from beef raised on the family ranch. As to the mustard, despite the trappings of medieval splendor at Hearst Castle, his grandfather always had bottles of mustard and ketchup on the table. "The whole idea is that it was a ranch," he said. "So you would be eating surrounded by tapestries, and you would say, 'Pass the mustard.' "

At a post-screening supper and show, in a glass-enclosed room on the 44th floor of the Hearst Tower, there was little that was ranchlike. The meal was catered by Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised New York celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, who is to food right now as Jennifer Hudson, the evening's entertainment, is to music.

But while Hudson gave it her all, singing and strutting and seducing several executives (including Bennack) into stepping out onto the dance floor to shimmy with her to Whitney Houston's song "I Want to Dance With Somebody," bountiful bowlfuls of caviar remained untouched.

That's no reflection on anything but the taste buds of the revelers. When I passed a 44th-floor door marked "Kitchen," I noticed that New York health authorities had given it a large A. The Hearsts wouldn't settle for anything less.

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